Just when I was kinda-sorta-starting to believe (against most logic) the relentless charges that the Augustine Commission was too pessimistic, that the hardware/budget/timeline picture is better than it looks ... Wayne Hale goes and pours water on those hopes.

Just when I was kinda-sorta-starting to believe (against most logic) the relentless charges that the Augustine Commission was too pessimistic, that the hardware/budget/timeline picture is better than it looks ... Wayne Hale goes and pours water on those hopes.

Thank you very, very much for your candor. -Alex

That's not how I read it.. I'm honestly not sure what to make of Wayne's Blog.

Does he feel like a lot of effort was wasted on options that could never fit in the budget and that the commission should have spent more time coming up with, and making sure they had the numbers right on options that could fit in the budget???

Yes, this is partly while I voted on the opinion poll in the space policy sector. We would have been better off with Delta IV/Orion together with a unmanned supply Orion to preserve the near term future.

I would like to ask Wayne Hale what he thinks of Sen. Nelsons comment re. "if heavy lift based on existing shuttle and CxP assets can't be built today for $11 Bil then we might want to reconsider if that's something NASA should be doing at all" para-phrasing of course.

Just when I was kinda-sorta-starting to believe (against most logic) the relentless charges that the Augustine Commission was too pessimistic, that the hardware/budget/timeline picture is better than it looks ... Wayne Hale goes and pours water on those hopes.

Thank you very, very much for your candor. -Alex

That's not how I read it.. I'm honestly not sure what to make of Wayne's Blog.

Does he feel like a lot of effort was wasted on options that could never fit in the budget and that the commission should have spent more time coming up with, and making sure they had the numbers right on options that could fit in the budget???

If I may be so bold, he may be tired of the second guessing by everyone.

He may be tired of the constant change in direction.

He may be tired of the promise of one thing, only to be shot down in reality because those in power do not deliver.

He may be likely tired of "doing more with less"

He may be tired of essentially being told to explore the universe for less than 19 billion a year but at the same time having to fund everything else on NASA's plate.

He may be tired of not being able to leave LEO in 40 years but hearing that "Mars is the ultimate goal" for the duration of some of his co-workers lives yet never seeing any real progress.

« Last Edit: 10/11/2010 10:45 PM by OV-106 »

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Enjoying viewing the forum a little better now by filtering certain users.

I would like to ask Wayne Hale what he thinks of Sen. Nelsons comment re. "if heavy lift based on existing shuttle and CxP assets can't be built today for $11 Bil then we might want to reconsider if that's something NASA should be doing at all" para-phrasing of course.

"What is in this bill is eleven-and-a-half billion dollars over the next six years, anticipated, even though it's a three-year authorization, for development and testing of a heavy lift rocket," he said. "Now if we can't develop a new rocket for eleven-and-a-half billion dollars, building on a lot of the technologies that were already developed in spending nine billion (on the Constellation program's Ares rockets), if we can't do it for that, then we ought to question whether or not we can build a rocket."

I think OV-106 may be close, but I suspect some other issues simmering as well. Wayne may be dragging things out a little, but in the interim it should at least provide the impetus for a more interesting discussion than if he came out with a singular comprehensive tome.

(2) I dunno about him, but I know that a lot of effort was wasted. The key proof of this, in my mind, is the front and center presentation of BTDT as a valid reason for government policy. Once that completely erroneous axiom is accepted, it opens the gate for justification of future government policy only upon the criteria of newness. As I've mentioned, "Rox in space? New, new, new!"

The wasted effort went to hashing out, in elaborate detail, the costs of uber-expensive possible missions, largely to provide fodder for the master debaters of policy. Either that, or to give some substance to the forward looking statements of insider corporate interests, which I suspect is more to the point. Either that, or our policymakers are deliberately satisfying that British prediction that Americans will try all the wrong things before accepting the right thing.

Causuistry: The sophistry of causality; a form of deliberate cognitive dissonance where the same data point is used to argue in favor of one course of action, and agains a different, but essentially similar, course of action. Two examples: The alcoholic parent disapproving of his kid wanting to go out drinking. Finding out where Phobos came from is very important; the Moon's origin, not at all.

Per Wayne: "the committee was snookered by OMB". I'd add, the OMB was snookered by the political direction it was given, in that, in all probability, it's numbers were also suspect on certain fundamental levels. This is me looking at what comes out of the black box of OMB, and attempting to understand the working process within that black box. There I go again, but what else does Wayne mean when he sez: "the financial estimates made for the committee are highly suspect"?

He goes on to say: "at the very least the committee had ensured that NASA would get a significant budget increase". As I've said, and what must be true, government activity is deliberate conscious effort. It is goal seeking and it is fundamentally teleological.

Picking on HEFT again from this standpoint, and just because it is fresh in my mind. From the recommendations: Focus technology development on near term exploration goals (NEO by 2025); Do not develop a dedicated ISS ERV. If the goal of NEO by 2025 is accepted, then the recommendation of no dedicated ERV might very well result from the data generated in seeking to prove the feasibility of that goal. But that is no recommendation to make that visit; it is the goal and purpose of the report in the first place.

I would say that a purpose of the OMB report was, not surprisingly, to get an increase in NASA's budget. There's nothing wrong with overtly asking for an increase with the support of logical data, and everything wrong about hiding purpose behind false data. OMB was snookered.

Finally getting back to TrueBlue. It seems that the A-Comm was given a menu of choices to choose from. In part, what we need is the creation of the proper choice. That is, what we need is a proper path towards colonization. What we're getting instead is fireworks and BFR's. The clear outcome is that, for the forseeable future, we stay on planet.